Something like this:

RewriteRule "^photo/(.*)$" "http://www.linkzdirect.com/art/$1" [R=301,L]

hey man thank u so much it worked like a charm , im really grateful to u .
there is one more thing i would like to ask
i have also changed the profiles from www.linkzdirect.com/username to uesrname.linkzdirect.com by wildcard dns and blah blah blah it works like a charm but i still hvent been able to figure out a 301 redirect for it as well.

here is the original code.:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule .+ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9_-]+)$ profile.php?ID=$1 [QSA,L]

its replaced to :

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^w]{3}.*).linkzdirect.com$
RewriteRule ^$ /profile.php?ID=%1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^w]{3}.*).linkzdirect.com$
RewriteRule ^/(.+)$ /$1 [QSA,L]

so i would really really apprecite man if u can guide me in this as wel. plus i need to learn .htaccess redirect can u give me a good tutorial link to.
thanks again bro

do you mean you want to redirect e.g. www.linkzdirect.com/pritaeas to pritaeas.linkzdirect.com ? Something like this perhaps ?

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.linkzdirect.com$
RewriteRule ^(\w+)$ http://$1.linkzdirect.com [301,L]

Docs:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html

yup thts wht i want. sweet thx let me try if that works and thanks for the tut link

hey again. nop didnt worked getting a 500 server error. Want me to share teh full .htaccess file?
Regards